


i carry your heart with me (i carry it in my heart)

by orphan_account



Category: Merlin (TV)
Genre: Alternate Universe - Modern Setting, Angst, Depression, First Meetings, Hurt/Comfort, Identity Issues, Implied/Referenced Homophobia, Implied/Referenced Suicide, M/M, Mental Health Issues, Panic Attacks, Reincarnation, Romance, Social Anxiety, Suicide Attempt
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2014-11-11
Updated: 2014-11-11
Packaged: 2018-02-25 01:18:14
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 3
Words: 13,160
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/2603249
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/orphan_account/pseuds/orphan_account
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Merlin dreams of a man who's also called Merlin and who has his face, of a man he never was; of another man called Arthur that he never met; of magic. Merlin has no magic, he is not the other Merlin, and he's never met Merlin's Arthur. He's just an average university student battling depression and overwhelming, recurring dreams that have shattered every perception of truth and reality he's ever had. One day, then, he meets Arthur, who has the face of the man in his dreams but who's just an average man with too many burdens on his shoulders. Even though Merlin doesn't believe in fate, or destiny, he knows nothing will ever be the same again.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Prologue (Merlin)

**Author's Note:**

> I've written quite a lot of this already, but fair warning; updates will be coming very slowly since I'm finishing up my degree at the moment and RL is very busy in general, so please keep in mind that this will be a WIP for a long time. 
> 
> I say I've written a lot of it already, because it was my plot for the Paperlegends of 2012/2013, I think? Summer 2013, yes. For various reasons I had to drop it, then took the general idea of it up again for the pornathon entry 'come to me, my measureless dream'; the entirety of 'wait for me (i'll come find you)' is also based on this as well, just changed at the end to fit a canon-themed one-shot, so if it feels familiar to you, that's why. However, the plot didn't leave me alone, so... I kind of got back into it. 
> 
> Please heed the warnings!, and thank you for reading, if you do.
> 
> (It might be very confusing at first, but it'll clear up as the story continues, I hope.)

**prologue**

_The first memory I have is one of a life I never lived._

_When I try to ignore it and concentrate on my mother instead, it works well. It’s taken a lot of patience, but after twenty years of intentionally trying to forget the unforgettable, it is now, finally, my mother that is the first thing I consciously see. I look past the wax crayons and white paper on the kitchen table at her. She is preparing dinner on the stove, but I don’t smell what she’s cooking. I pull the heavy blanket down to my chin and peer at my mother’s face through the dim light streaming in from the hallway, how she bends down to place a goodnight kiss on my forehead, but I don’t feel her lips. I walk, crying, through the back door of our house, holding my trousers in a cramped grip over my knee as I hobble towards my mother and she, half-amused, half-angry, admonishes me for the nettle rash burning all over my leg. I don’t hear her words._

_This is my life. The one in which my senses fail me. The one whose memories need to be conjured cautiously, slowly, when they should be easily recalled._

_And yet, there is another memory, but it belongs to someone else: someone who doesn’t exist. Who never has._

_I can recall precisely how it felt to be caught by that memory as a child: like being trapped in a maelstrom I couldn’t escape; being overpowered by a current because I was too weak; being sloshed over by tremendous waves and pulled down underneath the surface of the water. I was powerless. I was the anchor at the bottom of the sea, at other people’s mercy, stranded in uncharted depths while the sheer pressure of it was suffocating me slowly. Even today I feel a vicious pull in my throat that cuts my breath short, almost as if in warning._

_As hard as I try to evade the memory… it haunts me. In my sleeping hours, in my waking hours._ None of us can choose our destiny, _echoes in my head, unbidden; there’s no escaping it, even if the words aren’t meant for me._ And none of us can escape it.

_Destiny. A concept I’ve learnt to hate, one whose existence I deny, and he never could._

_When I allow the memory to overwhelm me, I see forests. Vast greenbrown plains stretching out before me—_ him _, I remind myself. Him, the one to whom the memory truly belongs, not me—as far as he can see. I know he can feel the branches snap, the leaves rustle beneath the soles of his feet as he walks (and I don’t just feel their echo, I feel it as he feels it—the pressure, the texture, the shape, as if I am there. Not just with him, but inside of him, part of him (as if I_ am _him)._

 _I know he smells the lushness of life: the scent of pine, similar to rosemary, sticks to his nose as I watch him wander. When I wake it surrounds me, even though it shouldn’t. It’s pervasive and honey-thick, and the smell of pine-rosemary is mine, now, and for a few sleep-addled moments I am confused about why I don’t feel the fabric of a badly spun bedroll, the fabric scratchy against my cheek, beneath me, why no stray bark found its way into my hair. I have to remind myself that those things are not mine. They never were. They’re_ his _, the man who doesn’t exist. Who can’t exist._

 _Often I fall alseep to the strangely soothing smell of a camp fire, and a stranger’s voice teases me like a ghost’s echo:_ “If you sleep any closer to the fire, you’ll burn your face.” _Those nights are long, calm and peaceful. Then, there are other nights. Nights from which I wake dripping with sweat, shell-shocked, and my irregular, pounding heartbeat echoes his panicked running from my dream, the consuming need that makes him crash through the undergrowth in hot pursuit, desperate to find something, to save something, because he must, because he can, because he wants, because he_ needs _—through the labyrinth of towering trees, forward, faster, forward, racing, stumbling, without breath, past (un)familiar vales, not far now, just another moment—_

 _Only to wake myself by screaming, because he—and through his eyes I see it too, as clear-cut as a mirror’s edge, as vivid as a kaleidoscope—he sees—I see… I…_ we _see the small boat steadily being carried away by the stream, away from him, away from me, away from us. Forever out of reach, disappearing into the mists and there is nothing I can do…_

(because it was too late—he was, I was, we were always too late)

_…but watch as his purpose, his very being disintegrates in the very same moment. I am sucked down with him, a shadow losing the substance it never had as the sun changes in its angle and bows goodbye to bid a forever night to take its place instead._

_Besides the forests, there are fields. High grass. Coarse straw. The scent of horses, the sound of whinnying, the smoothness of their hair. The chill of streamwater too early on a brisk daybreak. The pungent scent of a prey’s raw flesh. Stones, too. Their hard, uneven pressure against his back (digging into_ my _back as I wake). Painful under his knees (roughening_ my _kneecaps)._

_A throne room. Great halls. Flags fluttering in the breeze. Blunt swords, sharp swords. Polished armour. Chain mail. Nobility. Servants._

_A gift that should have been but no longer is._ Magic _._

_Crowns. Kingdoms. Fallen kingdoms. Kings. Dead kings. Princes. Dead princes. Dead princes in lakes. Dead kings in lakes._

_A single face. Always, a single face._

_A single, immortal face, because it lives behind his eyelids, in the pulse of his wrist._

_I have seen it, how he saw this face, phantom-like, ephemerally eternal and eternally ephemeral, as he watched settlements become towns; it accompanied him, like a ghost, as he watched seas dry out, animals vanish from the surface of the earth through the greed of humans and the curse of time, life left behind here to be begun anew somewhere else, kingdoms fallen to pass into oblivion, history being immortalised untruthfully on parchment by winners, entire civilisations annihilated by disease to burn in stinking piles of rotten flesh._

_The world kept turning, and he kept waiting. With the face behind the lids of his eyes, in the pulse of his wrists, and the dream of the boat vanishing into the mists._

_Loneliness. Hopelessness. Shame. He was left behind. Cursed. Eternity was a curse that was slowly, perpetually poisoning every single one his nerves until one day he betrayed the last and only wish that had ever meant something to the man with the face: he was no longer himself._

_(Yet, I wonder sometimes, was it not a fair trade? “Stay with me,” I’ve heard him say, but he was forsaken; in turn, so he too did forsake the man.)_

_Every sleeping hour, every waking hour. That one memory harbouring an entire lifetime. His memory that drowns my world, deadens it: no taste, no scent, no sound. The memory that causes my senses to collapse. This unconscious memory, visceral as my every breath._

_And I hate it._

_It’s not my life. It’s_ his _. Yet it’s the one in that makes_ my _senses burst. My own memories are lost to his, replaced by visions of the past that make no sense to my mind. How can they feel so much like my own when I am all too aware they can’t be?_

_The first memory of my life is vivid, and it belongs to someone else: someone who doesn’t exist. Who never has._

_Who never will, because it’s not me._

_I’ve… ignored it. Ignored it for twenty-four years. I’ve lived as I have lived, half a shadow, fighting to overcome the memory, yet never succeeding. I could have lived with knowing he saw that one face, drove himself mad with it—because it wasn’t me who saw that face. But that isn’t what happened._

_No, I_ felt _it. And I knew his desperation, then, knew what it was to chase a ghost, because the ghost he chased became the ghost that chased me._

_After twenty-four years, ignoring was no longer an option, with the arrival of that fateful day in August._

_That fateful day caused the face to disappear from his eyelids to appear before_ me _instead: no longer a ghost, a phantom, a wish I never wished, but a physical, material form. It escaped the pulse of his wrist to become its own pulse, its own being._

Arthur.


	2. August I (Arthur)

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> One August night, Arthur leaves his old life behind to begin a new one. He begins it in Morgana's town, at Morgana's place, and meets a man that he doesn't know yet will change his life forever.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Since the next Arthur POV will take a while, I'll say this so it makes some more sense: this is your typical, average, "Uther tries to control Arthur's life by making him marry a woman but Arthur's gay and can't take it anymore so he leaves"-scene.

**August I, 2013 (Arthur)**

  
Arthur’s head is tilted to the side and back, forehead restling against the cool windowpane, vibrating as the car drives on. His line of sight is focused directly on the height of the street lamps from outside; they go past him unnoticed as mere irritating flashes of light in the darkness. There is nothing to do, nothing to focus on when he can’t have his own hands on the steering wheel. His fingers itch for that now, want to curl around something round, something leathery. Instead they lie in his lap, folded neatly, intertwined. It’s the same way his father sits, all proper and prim, but right now he can’t be arsed about it. He’s attempted a few rounds of Scrabble and Bejeweled on his mobile but even here his focus didn’t hold long. It lasted through the first thirty minutes of the drive, but after that the letters and pictures all blurred together, an angry, too bright glare of colours and light in the darkness of the car, and the painful throbbing of his temples intensified to the point that it made him grimace.

It’s lessened now, the headache. Fortunately. He doesn’t mind physical strain, he’s grown up with it, but the gradual, slow buildup of that intangible ache somewhere inside his head is something he’s never liked much. The pull of exertion in the muscles of his arms and legs, that’s what he’s used to. And it’s a good kind of pain too, self-induced and wanted, the result of a good round of footie or an hour too long in the gym. He revels and relaxes with the dragging ache of it in his thighs and calves, but headaches—Gods, he _despises_ those. Sure, he pops a couple Ibuprofen or Paracetamol whenever it gets too intense, but mostly he tries not to. There’s just something aggravating about that kind of pain that he can’t stand. It appears after long hours of work, almost like a signal from his body, warning him to lay off for the day and go home. It appears after conversations with his father, after one of Morgana’s tirades over mobile, and lately, more often than not, it’s begun to appear after the meetings with Leon. There’s a whisper of impotence at the back of Arthur’s mind when he thinks of it, because that’s what it is, isn’t it? The inability to stop at the right moment, to know when it’s enough—impotence to care for himself properly, Morgana is always saying. Impotence to shut off his head and just let the thoughts _be_.

He closes his eyes as the headache gets especially insistent for a moment, pulsing with the force of well-aimed hammer, blows on the sides of his forehead. It pulls a heavy sigh from his lips. Yeah, impotence may as well be his third name tonight—after what he pulled at the restaurant, and, most importantly, after what he was doing now—

He shakes his head against the thoughts trying to overwhelm him like too much water pressing up against an unstable sea wall, threatening to well over. Morgana’s right, just as she almost always is. It would usually be aggravating to acknowledge it, but right now he’s too busy pinching his nose, cursing the silence of the car. There’s nothing to distract him here, no sounds or sights to keep the thoughts from chasing one another around in his head. A feeling of unreasonable anger slams through him at that, and before he knows what he’s doing he’s sat up straight and leaned forward, hammered his fist none too gently against the windowpane separating him and the driver.

“Hey,” he says, irritated and impatient. The driver startles with a jerk from his contemplation of the street before him, and a part of Arthur can’t blame him. Arthur’s said all but said five words to him the entire night—Lane Street Thirty-Four, Camelot—before he’s thrown his sports bag unceremoniously into the car boot and climbed into the car without another word. He guesses he mustn’t have made an accessible passenger. The guy hadn’t tried to speak to him again, not even to ask him whether he’d actually got the cash for an almost two hour taxi drive in his purse. Arthur’s not sure whether it is because the man had recognised his face or  
because he’s just the kind of person to leave someone else alone who clearly wants to be left alone. He doesn’t care either way—he wanted silence, so he got it. Only now it aggravates the hell out of him, and he needs something else to focus on or he’ll climb the walls.

“Yes, sir?” the driver says. Arthur watches his eyes find him in the interior mirror. He can’t make out much of his face—there’s only the dim light on in the front—but his tone is cautious, neutral. The latter, then. He doesn’t seem to have recognised Arthur. It’s a good thing he’s not going for placating, because if Arthur were a bastard and not just an arse he thinks he could just get out of here without paying and the guy wouldn’t say much, too intimated by him to do anything.

“Turn the radio on, will you,” Arthur demands, holding the man’s gaze for a few tense seconds. The other eventually breaks away with an acquiescing murmur, and a moment later, Arthur supposes what’s a song from the Top 40s starts blaring through the speakers at a low volume. He doesn’t know it, but it doesn’t matter. It’s sound—albeit horrid—and it’s something else to focus on, allows him to sink back into the seat a little more relaxed, shoulders loosening slightly. It’s definitely not an antidote for the headache, but… what the hell, right? He isn’t going to stop thinking anyway. After playing around on his mobile he’s attempted a couple of the techniques Leon’d shown him in order to try to empty his mind, but it hasn’t worked. Not tonight.

(He’s got the distinct feeling not even Morgana will be able to do much for him tonight, but—later. Later.)

So instead of futilely trying to escape the vicious thought cycles in his head, why not simply try to drown them out with something louder. Granted, it’s not exactly the kind of music he’d have chosen, if possible—it’s silly and unrhythmic, follows no discernible pattern that he could repeat over and over again in his head (substituting thought patterns with sound patterns is one of his favourite of Leon’s techniques)—but it’s music, makes the interior of the car a little more lively, and he forces himself to bob his head along with it, pretending to enjoy it.

When the song ends and the radio speaker’s voice crackles through the speakers with a “That was Madonna’s _Vogue_ for you, ladies!” it makes him bark out a laugh, unexpectedly.

Ladies, indeed.

\---

He arrives at Morgana’s place one and a half hours later, a couple anxieties and irritations richer and almost three hundred quid lighter. It makes him smile a little, how significantly thinner his wallet is. He can fold it in half and fit it into his pocket more easily now and maybe it’s not so bad, leaving the money with a taxi driver instead of leaving it at an overpriced restaurant with barely-pronounceable wine names and even less eatable food, as was tonight’s intention. He wonders about what Leon would say; probably something along the lines of less money, less responsibility. A metaphorical sort of letting go. The thought makes him stop, makes the smile on his face grow a little, become a little more authentic. Arthur’ll miss Leon—as much as one could miss one’s therapist, that is.

The taxi driver leaves him with a stiff “Good night, sir,” slams the door behind him and drives off as though the devil were on his heels. The sound of the engine revving is loud in the street, and Arthur stares at the receding back lights until they vanish from sight. He stows his purse away in his pocket absently. Sighs once, heavily, through his nose. With a slight shake of the head, he decides he’s done enough staring soulfully at nothing for tonight.

He grabs his sports bag and hefts it over his shoulder, then finally looks up at the house before him. He’s been here before, of course. A few times. Long enough to recognise the house front—a typical working class house; rusty brown in colour, white window frames, a small, well-kept front garden—but never long enough to recognise whatever charm Morgana sees in it. Perhaps it is the absence of charm that so attracted her to this nondescript building; it seems like the sort of house a normal person would grow up in. It looks a little gloomy in the night, sinister, in a way. Even the music and the voices of people talking, shouting and laughing so clearly filerting out through its walls does nothing to alleviate the sinister impression. The street isn’t exactly illuminated richly, and the closest street light flickers occasionally like it can’t quite decide what to do. He’s a little like that street light, Arthur thinks then, stupidly—standing on the street, indecisive, hesitant. It would be no problem to just ring the bell and go inside. Certainly no one would take offense to another person; from what he can see through the windows, there seem to be enough people inside already.

Still, something stops him from just barging up to the entrance and ringing the bell. Instead, he digs around in his pocket with his free hand, looking for his mobile. When he’s found it he walks a little further down the street, away from the noise. He calls speed dial number two and waits through the ringing in his ear, standing there, the awkward, distinct feeling of not belonging here painfully obvious in his taut posture. A huff escapes his lips as Morgana’s voicemail answers. Glaring, he flips the phone shut and stuffs it back into his pocket before he looks back up to the house.

He grits his teeth and cards his hand through his hair, makes it stand in all directions. He’s angry at himself. He’s not usually—no, he’s not _at all_ indecisive and hesitant, and even if tonight is an enormous one-off, the exception of exceptions… he hates this even more than the headache still tormenting him, and that’s saying something. He just wants to go inside and lock the door of a room he’s got to himself behind him, perhaps have a bit of whatever ( _strong_ ) booze Morgana’s got to make sleeping easier. He doesn’t want to have to deal with people. He doesn’t want to have to deal with questions. He wants to forget his own name for tonight, wants to disappear for a couple hours because he’s just so damn sick of _everything_ —

“What are you doing here?”

Arthur’s head snaps up at the voice echoing loudly through the street. His eyes immediately zero in on Morgana’s flat to find her standing alone in the doorway. She stares at him for an interminable amount of time during which he only stares back, frozen to the spot. Eventually she makes a sound and turns around, sticks her head back inside to… talk to someone? He takes a few steps closer and stops at the small hedges lining her front yard. Morgana hears his steps and looks at him, once, intensely, before she urgently says, “Just _tell_ him,” to the person inside and slams the door shut forcefully behind her.

He watches Morgana blankly as she looks him up and down, assessing, taking in the rumpled Armani shirt and slacks and the sports bag peeking out from behind his shoulder. Morgana seems a little tired herself this night, her thick curls of hair framing her pale face, cheeks flushed red from what Arthur supposes is alcohol. It’s a party, after all. She holds herself a little warily, like she’s not quite sure what she should be doing.

“Arthur,” she eventually says, calmly. Then she repeats, “What the hell are you doing here?”

Hes know what she’s really asking: _Why did you take a three-hour drive here on a Friday night to visit me at midnight?_ Is _this a visit?_ It rubs him the wrong way, her words and posture, how she holds on to her skirt too tightly, the stiffness of her shoulders. To his credit, he _did_ call her a couple times. She just never answered. And, while she’s not exactly obligated to know, he’d thought—he’d thought that she’d kept today’s date in mind. At least, just… in case.

“I can leave again,” he says in greeting, because apparently she didn’t.

Morgana looks— _caught_ , in a way that makes Arthur’s stomach sink. He scowls immediately, feel humiliation prickle hotly over the back of his neck. Despite their differences, she’s always welcomed him, the door of whichever house she lived in always open for him. Granted, she is having a party now, but he’s crashed at one or two of her parties before; even when she was still in school, she’d never seemed… embarrassed about his presence before. If anything, she’d tousled his hair and shoved him, unprepared, into the middle of the living room and announced, “This is my tosser of a brother. He’s a bit of a stuck-up pillock, so make sure to get him plastered before you try to talk to him!”

But right now, she looks as if she wants him to be anywhere but here. As if this, tonight, is the one party in her life that he just can’t crash at. He observes the thin line of her pinched mouth, the way the corners of it keep trying to curl down. She straightens a little, obviously attempting relax whatever tension makes her want to lean away from him—

“Have you been drinking again?” she says, laughing, Arthur thinks, a tad too forced to be realistic. “Told you to lay off it.”

—and fails.

“I can leave,” he merely repeats, tired of playing games tonight. He could, too. He’s got no idea where the hell he’d go, but he could leave. Maybe he could camp it out in a guesthouse for a while before Elena comes back from Austria. Camelot is bound to have some of those…

The thought of spending the next weeks on his own makes him avert his eyes.

“Are you okay?” Morgana says, suddenly. He doesn’t reply and keeps his eyes focused on the ground. No, he’s not. He’s not okay. Morgana must see something in his face, at least, because she takes a cautious step closer. From the corner of his eyes Arthur sees her hands relax, fall to her sides. “Wart?” she asks, softly, into the silence.

The name makes the weight in his chest loosen a little. Her voice, concerned now, makes him close his eyes as he feels it lay itself over the feeling of being a stranger, soothing and warm… Welcoming, he thinks, like it’s okay for him to be here in this night instead of where he ought to be. It makes the breath in his throat catch for a moment and he raises his head.

When he speaks, his voice is rough and low. “Uther’s date was most _splendid_ ,” he says, humourlessly.

Morgana stares at him uncomprehendingly, and he can almost see the gears in her head turning, trying to figure out what exactly he’s talking about. He can pinpoint the exact moment of realisation on her face—she pales even further, a ghostly white that makes her look sick, eyes widening, and from the ‘O’ of her mouth comes a shocked gasp. “Fuck,” she says, feelingly, and the sheer amount of horror put into that single exclamation tells Arthur that she’s realised he’s messed it up for good, irrevocably and fatally.

And then, “Oh, Arthur.”

Morgana’s arms are there in an instant, tight around his neck. He buries his noise in her hair and inhales deeply, the familiar scent of her shampoo—still the same berry-mix—inexplicably causing a small wave of relief to wash over him. There’s something warm in that scent, and even through the last years, it’s the only thing that’s ever reminded him of home. The ‘thud’ of the sports bag falling to the floor reaches him from a far distance as he curls one arm around her waist and lays a hand flat against her shoulder. The embrace doesn’t last long, because Morgana pulls back and the half-expected, half-unexpected grin on her face is blinding, all wary cautiousness gone.

She doesn’t look contrite at all. Maybe, Arthur thinks, the time for that is over, tonight. Maybe it’s been over a long time ago.

“You did it?” she asks into the space between them, hushed, as if telling a secret. Arthur wrinkles his nose a little; her breath smells sour. Definitely alcohol. His face makes her grin soften into a smile. “Really?”

“I did it,” he murmurs. The disbelief on her face so evident it makes his own lips twitch, and the solidity of her body underneath his hands is reassuring. “Really really,” he can’t help but mock her a little, lips twitching into a crooked, small smile.

She keeps looking at him intensely, eyes darting back and forth over his face as if looking for something. Whatever it is, she seems to find it. To his horror, he watches the way her mouth tightens and her eyes glaze over with a sheen of wetness—tears, he realises. He doesn’t really know what to do, stupidly remains standing there with a hand on her shoulder and waist. She takes pity on him and decides to end the awkward, mutually embarrassing moment. Neither of them usually do embracing over a matter that’s neither life nor death, but Arthur thinks they might be forgiven for tonight.

“Was about time, too,” she says. Her hands find his hair and teasingly tug at it. “But you were always slow at things, so I shouldn’t be surprised.”

“Your faith in me is astounding. Just don’t overdo it, or I’ll be pressed hard to believe you.” Arthur can’t help pinching her in the side in retaliation. She jerks away from his touch and the tugging of his hair isn’t nearly as half-hearted this time, but then she lets go and steps back, clearing her throat. There’s a moment of silence.

“So,” she says at length, squinting down at the sports back resting at his feet. He thinks he can see her fighting not to break out into another grin. “Planning on going somewhere with that?”

There are quite a couple things Arthur could say, but he settles on a dry, “I was planning on camping it out on your front door for a while, actually.”

She turns in a half-circle and pretends to consider her non-descript door critically. “It _is_ a rather handsome door, that’s true.” She nods along with her words and looks at him from the side. He can see a shadow flit over her face, but it’s gone before his next breath, and instead there’s a grin, now. “Far too handsome for you, in fact. I think you’ll do with the bathtub just fine, won’t you?”

Arthur feels the weariness creep back into his limbs a little, and deliberately ignores the idea that Morgana’s grin looks just a tad forced, again. She’s a grown woman. She’s _Morgana_ ; she doesn’t do forced. If she really doesn’t like him here, he would’ve already been sitting in another cab. He decides to take her at face value—he’s done enough worrying for other people before this (his entire life, in fact), and tonight seems to be the night of selfish decisions anyway, so he just goes for it.

“Lead the way, then,” he says as he swings his sports bag over his shoulder, and she does.

\---

The bathtub turns out to be one of the guestrooms on the first floor; this one has spring-green walls that appear friendly and warm in the toned-down light, and a decently sized bed with a glorious, glorious mattress that sinks beneath Arthur’s weight just the right amount. He lets himself sag down on it, doesn’t bother pulling off his shoes. Morgana flicks him on the forehead with her finger, mutters, “Your shoes,” but leaves him be and exits the room with a, “Be back in a sec.”

As her steps recede and the door shuts behind her, Arthur closes his eyes and breathes in deeply, welcoming the darkness behind his eyelids. He replays the last minutes in his head: through the open door, he fast-forwards shoving through the colourful, claustrophobic crowd of people and past the music thrumming along the walls. There were two or three familiar faces he deliberately keeps nameless and traps away in the sea of faces. Those of Morgana’s friends he’s acquainted with would know soon enough, anyway, he’s sure. No point in rushing things. Not tonight.

In the stillness of the room, he finds his headache returning. It throbs in his temples, intensified through the dim pulsation of music through the walls. He groans slightly and grimaces. It worsens when he swings his legs over the bedframe and sits up. Morgana is back quickly enough and he peers up at her with one eye squeezed shut against the pain. She looks at him as she closes the door behind her, holding a glass of water, a small dark bottle, a spoon and a pack of pills.  
“Head’s killing you, right?” She sets the glass on the nightstand beside the bed.

Of course she knows without Arthur telling her. “Still having your funny feelings, then?”

“I see you are as eloquent as ever,” Morgana comments, sitting down beside him. He watches her open the pack with nimble fingers. “You should call it intuition, you know. That might just give you the pretence of intelligence.”

He snorts at that. Her strange sense of always seeming to know what was going on used to creep him out quite a lot, but he got used to it, really. When it’s not annoying or aggravating, he actually thinks it’s quite handy; like now, he finds himself reluctantly grateful for it as he eyes the silver sheen of the pill wrapping with growing interest.

“But no, it wasn’t intuition this time. It was more your face,” she says, smirking a little. “You always get this really pinched look, like you’re constipated.”

“Are you always such a pleasing hostess to your guests?” He reaches for the pills. For once she doesn’t antagonise him, lets him grab them. “Because I have to say you’re doing a crap job of it.”

“Special treatment for special guests. Besides, it could’ve been the tub. You ought to be grateful.”

He quicklys pop out two two pills and swallows them down with the lukewarm water. For no reason at all, her words hit home. She’s taking him in, after all, even though she initially seemed as if she wanted to stuff him back in the cab, have him gone. And now he’s here. He really ought to be grateful. He’s already shown someone else tonight just how grateful he was for their care, and look where it got him.

  
The thoughts thicken in Arthur’s head along with the headache until they chase one another around in his head. He grimaces as his body heats up. He undoes the first three buttons of his shirt and stares down at the floor. “I am. I am grateful,” he says, and the lower his voice gets, the unsteadier it becomes. “And sorry.”

Morgana makes a noise beside him and leans forward. One of her hands slides to the back of his neck, while the other comes to rest upon his knee. “Don’t be sorry,” she says, fiercely, “for doing what you should have done ten years ago.”

The truth of her words doesn’t do anything to lessen the renewed guilt pressing down on his shoulders, and Arthur yields to it, hunching over a little. He leans forward with his elbows on his thighs and slides a hand over the side of his face. He fists his hair, and the heel of his hand digs uncomfortably into the skin above his cheek, just below his eye. “I don’t even know what happened,” he murmurs, voice roughening. His eyes close, and the memories of tonight play over the back of his eyelids. His stomach churns in discomfort. “I wanted to go through with it. I was determined. Everything went well, I thought I could do it, and then… then I just—from one moment to the next, I, I just couldn’t,” he gasps out , shaking his head a little. He begins tugging at his hair, and the sting makes his head pulse in response, the headache still present. “I—I thought I could but I couldn’t, and then I just—I fucking _ran away_ ,” he spits out, chest flooding with hot shame. He beats his fist on his thigh, once, skin tight and uncomfortable. “Ran away like the bloody coward I am, didn’t explain anything to her, and she was even nice, and I just, just got up and, and bloody _legged it._ ” He draws in a sharp breath. “Fuck.”

He doesn’t even notice Morgana’s hand sliding over his to pry his hand away from his head; only the sudden absence of pain makes him realise it. She’s ducking down in an attempt to catch his eyes. He keeps his averted, feels too ashamed, guilty. Disgusted with himself.

“You are not a coward,” Morgana says quietly but firmly, her hand tightening around his before she links their fingers together. “If anyone is, it’s Uther, because he’s afraid of the truth.”

“I let him down,” Arthur grits out, the words familiar and worn-out from years of frustration, like the entire argument iself. “I always do.”

“No, Arthur.” Morgana pulls back. Her voice rises a little. “ _He_ let _you_ down. Years ago. And you stop being a bloody martyr and start being selfish for once.”

“I am selfish, Morgana. I wouldn’t be here otherwise.”

“That’s not being selfish, that’s taking care of yourself,” Morgana snaps suddenly, patience running thin quickly. She’s always been more mercurial with alcohol in her blood. “Which you’re in dire, dire need of. God knows you’ve slaved away—”

“Don’t,” he says, and his eyes find hers for the first time since the start of the conversation. He holds the gaze for a long moment and swallows hard. “I can’t.”

He’not ready for this. Hearing all the things he’s supposedly done over the last years when it’s painfully obvious to himself that he hasn’t—no. He’s not ready.

Morgana’s mouth flattens itself into an unimpressed line, but she keeps looking at him. He’s infinitely glad when the softness gradually returns to her eyes with each second she watches him longer. He’s usually a master at the art of stoicism, but she must see something in his face, something of the stark fatigue he feels inside that’s made its way into the furrows of his brow, the tightness of his shoulders. Something that makes her understand that tonight is _it_ for him, and that, come hell or high water, tonight he not only won’t, but he just _can't_.

“Does Uther know already?” she asks, pulling her hand from his knee.

He drops his head and buries his face in his hands. “Not tonight, Morgana,” he says, muffled, through his fingers.

“I know, I didn’t mean—but did you tell him? Does he know?”

Her voice is urgent, for some reason, and it makes Arthur sigh heavily as he gives in to her. He always gives in to her, in the end. “No.”

A moment of silence passes. The mattress dips as she moves off it to crouch before him, kneeling between his legs. The skin of her palms is hot against his knees through the fabric. He wants to keep his eyes closed, wants to keep hiding behind his hands, but her fingers close around his wrists and gently but insistently pull them away from his face. He immediately feels exposed, but something about Morgana’s quiet strength has always transferred to him when she is close, at least a little. It makes him open his eyes.

“If he doesn’t know now, he will know soon. And I know you’ll run yourself crazy tonight thinking. Won’t you?” she asks, unbearably soft. Something twists in Arthur’s chest. He grimaces in answer, briefly hates and loves how well she knows him. Her lips curl a little at the face he’s making, the fondness on her face embarrassingly obvious. “And I really don’t want to have to deal with you when you’re grumpy from no sleep in the morning,” she continues, “so we’ll cheat for my sake, just a little.”  
He frowns a little in incomprehension and wordlessly watches as she reaches to his right, gathering the spoon and the dark small bottle in her hand. Arthur already opens his mouth to argue—he doesn’t need bloody _drugs_ , Christ—but one tightening of her hand around his wrists silences him.

“Just do as I say.” She counts under her breath, filling the spoon with the dark liquid. “For my sake,” she murmurs, holding out the spoon to him. He narrows his eyes and defiantly glares back at her. She just raises her eyebrows, stares at him challengingly, and he groans, says, “I really don’t need this stuff,” even while he’s silently grateful for the promise of some uninterrupted, peaceful sleep. He takes the spoon from her and swallows, spluttering and gasping when the disgusting bitterness slides down his throat. It leaves a terrible aftertaste in his mouth.

“What the _hell_ is that?” he asks, pulling a face, downing the rest of the water.

“Atosil. No need to make such a fuss.”

“It’s vile!”

“I know,” she says off-handedly. “But it’ll help you sleep. You should lie down; it’s going to start in about twenty minutes. It’s better if you’re on a horizontal surface by then.”

“’s not gonna knock me out,” Arthur protests with a scowl, unconvinced. “I rather think it’s gonna keep me awake because I’ll have to puke.”

“You’re such a big baby.” Morgana pats him the knee and then stands up, makes as if to leave. Before she does, he feels her hand card briefly through his hair, and the scowl vanishes from his face, just like that. Her touch is soft, reassuring. “But I’m proud of you,” she murmurs, quietly. “Because sometimes you have to do what’s right and damn the consequences.” He swallows at the intensity of her bright eyes. “And that’s taking care of yourself. Which you did.” Her hand tightens in his hair, once, before she lets go and trails a finger down his cheek. “So damn the consequences.”

And she leaves him.

As soon as she’s gone, Arthur drops his head back into his hands. The room is silent, which makes him notice that the headache has abated. He’s grateful for that. Besides the incessant thinking, headaches are really the only thing that keep him from sleeping. He dimly wonders if the stuff Morgana has given him—the utterly despicable stuff—will help anything. He knows she sometimes still tends to take medication for her insomnia, but he also remembers how a large part of that medication has failed her. Well, I’m definitely not her, he thinks. It should work a lot stronger for him. He’s never been big on medication anyway, so if he’s lucky…

Arthur huffs out a breath and lets his hands fall from his face. He stares down and notices he’s still got his shoes on. He bends down to undo the laces and tugs them off, throwing them somewhere into the room; he really doesn’t care where they land, even if they’ve been expensive. He briefly eyes the sports bag, considering if he should dress for the night. In the end he just shrugs his shoulders and crawls onto the bed, lets himself fall back on it. His stomach has settled a little, thankfully, and his chest doesn’t feel like it’s trying to give him a seizure anymore, either. His body’s calm envelopes his mind in a sense of calmness, too, and he stares blandly up at the ceiling. For some reason, even if there is so much he should be thinking about, he just… doesn’t. His head is blissfully blank, if a little thick and hazy. His eyes grow heavier and heavier by the second. Sleep sounds like a good idea right now.

He doesn’t know for how long he’s been lying on the bed, but suddenly his bladder is complaining. His half-shut eyes snap open and he raises his head, stares down at his crotch. His head drops back on the mattress, and he groans. Great. Of course he’s got to pee now that he was just getting comfortable.

“Bugger,” he mumbles, pushing himself into a sitting position. As he makes to stand up, the room is suddenly spinning around him. He stumbles a little on his feet and has to catch himself on the bedside table so he doesn’t fall over. Everything is hazy and sort of dreamy, and he cautiously lets go of the bedside table and straightens. He distantly thinks it’s a little like being drunk, limbs heavy like lead and head fuzzy and light. The control he’s got over his body is wonky at best, but he has to pee, so he’ll just have to deal with it.

Arthur frowns in concentration as he makes his way towards the door. He reaches it well enough, slumping against the wall as he opens it. He staggers through the door frame, stopping in his tracks and blinking, disoriented, at the extreme brightness of the hallway lights. He stares up at the light overhead with a slack mouth, somehow finds himself utterly fascinated by it.

Through the far-away noise of the music still playing below, there’s a sudden thumping of feet which, he realises a long moment later, comes from the stairs. He slowly, slowly tilts his head to the side and watches the staircase. He still watches it as a person comes into view, a person hurrying up the steps and jumping over the last two ones in one go.

“Hi,” Arthur says, because it’s polite to say hello to strangers and because the world’s a little strange right now. Maybe it’s a dream, even. And he knows it’s important to make friends in dreams. They might help him out when he’s in a weird situation.

The person stops abruptly at Arthur’s greeting, and there’s a moment in which they don’t move at all. They stand there like prey about to be shot, rigid and silent, staring at him. He blinks blearily at them, eyes wandering over the thin form. There’s a distinct lack of roundness on the upper body—a man, then—and as he leans forward to look closer, he nearly tips over. He catches himself on the banisters just in time, cursing under his breath. The man is still unmoving, still staring, and Arthur looks up at his face, taking in an impression of narrow and ears and red and black and blue, blue, blue.

A tightening in his lower belly reminds Arthur of the need to pee, and he sighs, says, “Gimme a moment, mate,” before he looks back up at the man, who is still frozen… and _still staring_. Maybe it’s actually a corpse? A wax figure? Morgana’s always had an odd taste regarding decoration. Weird, because Arthur thinks he remembers there was nothing there before. Well, if it’s really a dream—

A moment later the man speaks. Not a dream, then.

“Holy fuck,” comes his voice, and Arthur winces a little, because the words are really loud. “Holy fuck,” the man repeats, this time with a lot more feeling. There seems to be something wrong with Arthur’s head or eyes, or maybe the man is just rude, because Arthur’s sure that staring at someone incessantly as the man is doing is actually quite impolite.

“Know I’m not at m’best,” Arthur says, the words coming slowly with a slight slur now, “but staring’s not nice, y’know?”

The only thing the man seems to be able to say in response to that is to drop the backpack he’s holding, make some weird motions with his hands and one or two strange noises, before he says, high-pitched and a little shocked, “ _Oh my God!_ ”

Out of nowhere, he erupts into motion. Arthur watches him bend down to his knees, and the speed of the man’s movements makes Arthur dizzy just from watching. The man gathers his backpack and holds it to his chest as if needing to defend himself from something, stares at Arthur for another long moment, and then stumbles back over his feet and runs down the stairs.

This time it’s Arthur who’s staring after him, frowning at the strange encounter. But then his belly clenches again, and he takes himself with cautious, staggering steps to the bathroom. He makes it safely back to his room with a considerably calmer bladder. The door slams shut behind him and he winces, having miscalculated the force to use. It doesn’t really matter, though, because the bed is comfortable, and it’s right there, accommodating to his body and his heavy, heavy limbs. The pillow is soft beneath his cheek, and his eyes flutter. He’s forgotten to switch off the light, but the darkness that welcomes his mind as his eyes finally slide shut with no effort at all is absolute and finite.

He falls asleep like that, to the thick haziness of his mind and the blessed absence of thoughts.

\---

When he dreams that night, the sea is calm, as if in contentment. The horizon is clear from clouds and thunder and rain, and no storms stir the water into frenzied movement. It shimmers, serene, in the rays of the ascending sun, and Arthur will never know that it is the exact shade of blue of the strange man’s eyes.


	3. August II (Merlin)

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Something happened to Merlin last night--it was last night, right?--but he can't quite remember what it was. Until he does; then he wishes he didn't remember, anymore.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> The aftermath of their first meeting, a less than typical aftermath of that, that is. I prefer them shagging or making eyes at one another or bickering in their stupidly flirtatious way, myself, but for the purposes of this fic it had to be this. Sorry.
> 
> Take the warnings seriously: this is a post-(probable) suicide attempt. Please don't read it you're triggered by this.

**August II 2013 (Merlin)**

 

He sleeps deeply.

The world is transient, and he wanders it with heavy, stumbling steps. Through wide fields of corn, stretching upright tall and golden. Along rocky shores of desolate beaches, curving around a sea that is calm and serene. Across vast deserts, the sand blistering beneath his soles. Over soft green grass, walls of stone towering old and derelict to his side. One scene blurs into the next after his third, fourth step, and he barely catches the roughness of a corn leaf beneath his thumb, or the scent of the sea water with his nose, salty and fresh.

Still he walks a long while. The field becomes the shore becomes the desert becomes the grass becomes the field again: they switch so suddenly that he has soon forgotten what they looked like at all. Instead, colours begin flooding in on his mind, an explosion of iridescence that dips his surroundings into surreality. When he looks next, through the sheen of soap bubbles glazing over his eyes, the shore harbours a sea of desert sand, and from between the corn leaves gape little towers of stone; the soft green grass becomes the rocks from the shore, and he walks over them until his feet hurt and bleed bursts of butterflies.

It seems like a dream, but he knows it’s not. For one, he’s half-conscious here (wherever ‘here’ is). He knows he’s walking, he knows he’s looking for something, he knows he’s sleeping. For another, he feels his heartbeat. It pulses not within but outside him, dull surges of pressure filling the space around him, substituting the air that is God’s breath. He is a leaf in the wind, fluttering into whichever direction the gushes of pressure force him. He is lead sinking underneath the water’s surface to the bottom, and the air in his lungs is the pressure swamping over him, causing the fine branches of his lung arteries to implode.

He is drowning. There is no air. His own heart beat is the butcher seeking to slaughter him.

 _Thud_ it goes, from regular _thud thud_   to fast _thudthudthud_ to slow _t h u d_ , and each time it aches. It’s not a dream. His heart beat is everwyhere. He is suffocating. On water, on air. On his own will to live. Faster, faster it pulses, outside him, shoving him into the sea of sand until his throat is raw and clogged up with the harsh grains. He can’t fight against it. He is slowing down. Becoming immobile. Becoming the sweep hand of a clock ticking into eternity. The clock is counting the forever past. The forever present. The forever future. Stuck in time. He’s stuck in time. Doesn’t know where he is. There are the lights of a vast city skycrapers’ shimmering against the night’s canvas like buzzing fireflies glowing between the towering trees of a primeval forest. There are yellowing pages of a disintegrating manuscript in a scientist’s hands resounding the decadent echoes of a bard’s baritone in a king’s great hall. The smoothness of a motorway street digs into his heels with the blunt edges of roughly hewn stones.

He sees cities underwater. Villages underwater. The sky underwater. The sky is an eye is two eyes is a face is a person is a stranger is a friend is a never-lover is a loss is a hope is an obsession is a curse is waiting underwater. Merlin is drowning, his heart wielding the knife that is slicing open his throat. He is drowning for centuries, except it’s not him, it’s the echo of what he’s lost and he’s hearing its sound, is hearing it still, mellifluous, deceptive, a breath a poison in his chest.

His body is slow, slow, a sinking weight, the ache of losing himself so pleasant, so sweetly relieving. His heart beat recedes like shadows fading with sunrise. He lies back, indifference sweeping over him like honeyed warm milk over a sore throat. His wounds are closing. There is no need to wait anymore, now. It’s over, at last.

The numbness feels strangely like contentment, and he wants to stay here forever. The ocean is blue and deep above him, and underneath his stretched limbs grass begins to grow, the sand becomes fresh earth, and a tree two three four five ten twenty trees grow from the earth to tower, tower, tower tall and proud and old. The fish are birds are chirping are singing long-forgotten prophecies in memory of him, _another_ him, odes to deeds he has never done because he couldn’t have because his gift is no longer. But there is no bitterness here, in this forest underwater, there is no fear here, no fear of loss or drowning because the ocean is the sky is an eye is two eyes opening at last is a face smiling is a person is a friend no longer waiting is a never-lover still is a stranger now is an obsession is a curse is home—

 _Is it?,_ he wonders, eyes opening to the sky opening above him, parting the water asunder. _Is it home?_ , he wonders, chest swelling with the sudden rush of oxygen into his lungs, violent and brutal.

Is it? Is it home?

 _Thud, thud, thud_ , his heart goes, pumping again.

\---

Merlin’s eyes are heavy. His entire body is heavy too, as if he had the entire weight of the world’s gravitation pressing down on him, rendering him incapable of movement, waiting to crush him. He is trapped, still, in the darkness behind his eyelids, eyes moving erratically underneath to the fast-changing hallucinations of a forest under the sea. He isn’t here, which is the result of his wishing not to be anywhere(, not to be) at all.

Now, Merlin is much calmer than three hours ago. His breathing is still too light, but steady. The cold sweat making his skin gleam, his clothes and the sheet stick to him, is a sign that he’s not lost, that his his body is fighting to exorcise the poison from his blood.

From a chair beside the bed, Gaius watches him, face wrinkled and contorted in worry and guilt. It is his seventh hour or sitting stiffly, of watching alertly. His instinct is warring with his sanity, which is cursing him for not calling an ambulance. But this is not a matter for the hospital that would only revert to the medication that made this night possible in the first place.

So he watches, so he guards, through the dawn.

\---

Waking up from a deep sleep is exhausting, and a process that is slow, so slow. The world Merlin’s eyelids flutter open to feels more like a dream than his sleep did: the ceiling above is white and blurred, like waves of blistering heat contorting a distant sight in summer. There is an ache that feels both detached and too close, dragging itself along the muscles of his legs and arms, pooling in his chest, heavy. He can’t move, not really. His limbs don’t obey him when he tries to shift on the bed. They anchor him down. A frustrated noise escapes his throat that is dry like sandpaper.

In his head there is a blankness, thick like persistent morning mist, that allows no distinct thought. He is hurting everywhere. He’s so weak. So weak and cold and _wet_ , and the pungent scent of stale sweat is in his nose before he realises it. It makes him contort his face into a grimace. The tendons in his throat work with the movement of him gritting his teeth, and he feels each of them singularly, tense and painful under his tight skin.

“It’s all right, Merlin. Shh,” comes a voice somewhere from the side. Merlin feels something unbearably hot touch his cold forehead and flinches back into the pillow. It’s a hand, he realises, fingers, stroking in soothing, calm motions over his cold-damp skin. “You’re okay. Don’t move, now. Go slow, very slow.”

The presence of another person sends a shock of anxiety through his chest, makes him freeze. He jerks away from the hand and makes a sound like a wounded animal, feeling helpless, irate, pitiful. The hand comes after him, laying itself over his head, and when the voice speaks again, he recognises it: Gaius. “It’s just me. Try to breathe, slowly.”

The words are familiar as the person himself, and with an ease that speaks of longstanding routine reaching back to childhood, Merlin opens himself up to it: the words sink into his bloodstream and he obeys, mindlessly, because Gaius is safe. He abandons the feeling of disorientation and the wrongness of the entire situation and opens his mouth, pulls in the air he’s so sorely lacking, his chest aching with the effort. His body becomes slack and pliant, but it’s okay to be helpless like this, because Gaius is here.

Through the next shuddery in- and exhalations, with Gaius’ fingertips brushing over his skin in a soothing rhythm, the fog in Merlin’s mind thins, disintegrates a little. He has no feeling left to estimate how much time is passing like this, but soon he can tilt his head ever so slightly to the side. Bleary-eyed, he recognises the mess strewn around him. This is his room, then. He is lying in his own bed. With the smidgen of returning clarity, he becomes conscious of his own body, soaked in sweat, aching and disgustingly weak. His shirt is sticking to his stomach and chest, and the sweat feels cold and clammy in his armpits and the back of his neck.

He has no recollection of what has happened at all. As of now, the immediate past is an empty slate.

He listens, absently, to Gaius’ murmured litany of ‘it’s all right,’ floats along empty-mindedly to the touch of the old man’s fingers through his hair. He lets his gaze wander through his room, frowning when he sees it. His room is a _mess_. It looks like someone had come and taken everything apart in search for valuable items. The wardrobe is open and clothes are spilling all over the floor. His backpack lies in the middle of it, along with his skates. His books, usually so neatly arranged in the two shelves (the only thing he cares to be tidy for), are strewn carelessly over every single surface Merlin can see. He becomes angry, overwhelmingly angry, when he sees that there are pages torn out, the floor and desk littered with them. He makes a noise through his nose, manages a croaky, “Was ’appened?”

It looks like someone went ballistic in here.

Gaius’ reaction is immediate. He shifts to the side and obstructs Merlin’s room from view, demands all the attention for himself. His fingers still on Merlin’s forehead for a moment before they resume their stroking. His voice is cautious and low. “It doesn’t matter, Merlin. It’s over now, and you’re okay. Nothing can happen to you,” he says. Then he adds, “I’m here.”

A small part of Merlin lets himself be soothed a little by that. The larger part, however, now that it’s felt the agitation, finds it harder to let go. It runs through his limbs like a shudder, floods his chest hotly, swamping over the chill inside. Makes him jerk back from Gaius, suddenly strangely wary of him. Gaius is here, he knows. But _why_ is Gaius here? In his room? What should happen to Merlin? What _did_ happen to Merlin?

For some reason, his heart speeds up at that, and his eyes flicker back and forth between Gaius and his room. His palms dampen. Something ominous creeps up the back of his mind, like a thick raincloud blocking out the sun.

“It’s okay, Merlin,” Gaius is quick to reassure him. He reaches out, but Merlin shrinks back. “It’s just me. I’m here. I’m here now.”

A sense of panic, unfounded but devastating, embraces Merlin and doesn’t let him go.

He can hear it. Voices. They reverberate like ghost’s echoes in the back of his mind. There’s an entire sea of them, laughing, cajoling, talking, yelling. In the background, there’s also something else, something rhythmic and heavy and so loud the memory is pulsing through Merlin, like it pulsed through him yesterday night, the music everywhere as he sat among the throng in a small room, a living room, and through the overpowering buzz of the memory stands out a single sound, a single voice, female, harried, worried, speaking words, over and over again.

  _…here… here now. He’s here._

_He’s here now._

The memory of last night hits him with the force of a derailed train. He can see it. It’s no longer contorted through haziness or loss of memory. It’s clear as day. Too clear.

Breathlessness. Panic. Unadulterated, raw panic. A sense of claustrophobia. Too many people, yet no place to hide. Not here. Need to leave. Escape. Stumbling through people. No air. Quick, _thump thump thump_ , haunted, haunted, feet thumping up the stairs because _he’s here_.

And then he was. Here.

Before him.

The curve of a jaw. The line of a leg. The shimmer of golden hair. A low, low, familiar voice.

Merlin’s ghost, standing before him.

The memory washes over him like a deluge, pulling him down under, stealing his breath, and he—doubles over, stomach lurching violently as if in response to a hard punch, and vomits into his own lap.

\---

He feels humiliated when Gaius has to help him into the shower. He is feeling so faint, even more strength having been sapped from his limbs now after retching out every bit of sustenance left in his body. He is trembling all over with exhaustion when he stands shuddering under the hot spray, waiting for it to wash away all the traces of last night while knowing it won’t work. There is something like a dooming sense of finality settling itself into the marrow of his bones, shaking him to the core and leaving him cold. Gaius’ hands are clinical on him, cleaning him up, ever the doctor. They are hesitant too, when they graze the back of his neck. They are rough when Merlin just so manages to reach upwards and turn the knob for the temperature—when he manages, against all odds, to push Gaius away, turning the water to _scalding_ , when, without support, his body fails to cooperate and sags in on itself, falling down onto the hard surface of the tub. Merlin doesn’t notice the pain in his kneecaps, just sits there, helplessy, unfeelingly, even as he watches his skin burn red. He’s laughing sobs and sobbing laughter from the mortification, the humiliation, the knowledge that this is _it_ , the end, the trap, the thing he’s always hidden from but can’t evade anymore now.

Gaius’ hands are rough when they pull him out of the water spray, manhandling the sense back into his body that he momentarily lacks.

They are soft when they wrap him up in blankets and enfold his face. They are soft, soft—the only hands in the world Merlin allows to touch his tears in this moment in time, as he falls apart like this, _because_ of this.

\---

It takes Gaius almost an hour to get Merlin sorted again. To quieten him, get him dry, get him dressed. Merlin’s arms and legs don’t cooperate at all, and Gaius has to move them for him. If Merlin were fully there he would be amazed at the strength left in Gaius’ body, at how he grips Merlin tight enough to bruise around the chest and frogmarches him back into the room. The only sense beyond the numbness that Merlin feels is faint gratefulness, because Gaius does it all on his own. He seems to know Merlin better than Merlin knows himself, sometimes, knowing he is the only person with the permission and tolerance to see Merlin in this state. He walks him forward to the bed, and Merlin doesn’t care about how it’s still wrecked with the contents of his stomach. Except it’s not—the sheets are clean and fresh when Gaius allows him to sink into them, cool as they receive his weary limbs. He’s tired. He doesn’t want to think. He doesn’t want to talk. He wants to be alone.

Gaius knows. He smiles down at Merlin, sad and brittle, before he pulls the blanket over his head.

Then, the chair squeaks, and he settles down.

Merlin falls asleep wishing it wouldn’t already be too late to go back to feeling safe with Gaius guarding him by his bedside.

\---

When he wakes next, it is dark.

For a moment he still thinks he’s asleep. The ceiling, as he blinks it into view, is tinted golden, not white. It takes him three minutes to notice it’s because of his yellow lampshade that paints the walls with colour at night. He tries to swallow what feels like a ball of fur sitting in his throat. It hurts. Like his entire body, still. But there’s a little bit of his strength back in his limbs now, he realises, as he turns his head to the left. His skin doesn’t feel as tight as before, is much more relaxed now.

It’s quiet in his room, except for the sounds of snoring coming from Gaius. Merlin allows himself a small smile as his cheek comes to rest on the pillow. He blearily gazes at the older man, watches as the soft glow from the bedside lamp smoothes out the wrinkles in his face, making him seem younger than he is. It can’t hide the exhaustion, though, or the furrows of his brow, still deep with worry and concern. Merlin just watches, feeling not a single trace of guilt. He is selfish that way, in the moment.

As if sensing his stare, Gaius wakes up. It’s instant and absolute; his head snaps up and his eyes open, alert, some of his long grey hair falling over his face and getting caught in his mouth with the movement. The sight, for no reason at all, makes Merlin grin a little. They stare at each other for a long, silent moment.

“Merlin,” Gaius says then, voice low from sleep. “You’re awake.”

“Very astute observation.” Merlin’s voice is raspy and unused. He knows what he’s saying, but the words feel slow and detached, like his brain can’t quite get behind them and his mouth is moving on his own. “You’re awake, too. Have you also noticed that?”

The look Gaius gives him is unimpressed and bland, and Merlin feels no different. When Gaius opens his mouth next to speak, he pulls a face, his hair getting stuck on his tongue. It makes Merlin snigger, seeing him spit out the hair. The snigger deteriorates into coughing because of the dryness of his throat, and soon he’s hacking great, rough coughs. There’s a sigh from Gaius before Merlin feels his hand thump on his back, once, twice. In the exact moment that his coughing stills there’s a glass pressed to his lips, Gaius’ hand at the back of his head, and a firm, “Drink up.”

With his head to the side Merlin manages two small gulps of water before the next cough. The water runs down the side of his face. Gaius makes him drink more, and he obeys because there’s really not much else he can do. His throat is soothed when settles back into the pillow, a little breathless.

“How do you feel?” Gaius asks him at length. “Physically, that is.”

Merlin gives a shrug, his lips twitching into a humourless smile. “Like I’ve been run over by a train,” he says. Because it doesn’t seem enough to really encompass the utter feeling of _weakness_ —he feels in his bones that he still can’t sit up if he tried—he adds, “And then a Brachiosaurus trampled all over me, for good measure.”

He doesn’t really expect Gaius to crack a smile at that, but when it doesn’t come, he still feels a little disappointed. It makes the entire situation so _serious_. He _hates_ seriousness.

“Don’t look at me like that,” he mutters. He feels uncomfortable under Gaius’ gaze, angry with the physical helplessness he’s experiencing. He’d like to turn around and present Gaius with his back (he really doesn’t care about much at the moment) but he’s got the feeling by the time he’d have managed that, Gaius would have climbed over him already.

“I think I am free to look at you however I want, Merlin,” Gaius says, much more sharply now, “after the little stunt you pulled.”

Merlin doesn’t like Gaius’ tone at all. He lets a moment pass before he tries to deflect. “What day is it anyway?” he asks, not very invested in the answer. Possibly because he’s dreading it a little.

“Monday night.” Gaius’ answer is prompt and immediate.

Merlin’s body briefly runs cold at that, and he fights to let his face betray no emotion. There aren’t really that many emotions to begin with—there’s mainly an intense stretch of indifference, and perhaps a little bit of guilt, this time, when Gaius meets his stare squarely, not a bit of softness left in the blue of his eyes.

Merlin shakes himself. There shouldn’t be any emotion. It was just a mistake, period. No need to make a fuss.

“Slept long, then, did I,” he comments, giving ‘lazy’ a try. He still has to evade Gaius’ eyes. “Wasn’t even a good sleep. You’d—”

Gaius isn’t having any of his bullshit. “There’s no such thing as ‘good sleep’ when you overdose on pills,” he cuts in, harshly. “There’s usually no such thing as ‘good morning,’ either.”

 _Yeah_ , Merlin thinks, detachedly. _That would've rather been the point of it. If it’d_ been _intentional. Which it wasn’t._

(Probably.)

“I just wanted to sleep,” he says, stares resolutely at the ceiling. “No big deal.”

“If you just want to sleep you take a single pill, not half the pack.”

 _What if the single pill doesn’t work?_ Merlin wants to ask. _What if it’s the only thing I’ve got left to help me sleep? What if the only step left is the fucking loony bin again?_

“You can be glad you’re still here, Merlin.”

Yeah, but _of course._ Absolutely; can’t Gaius see he is virtually _brimming_ with excitement?

“You could’ve gone to hospital.”

Would’ve been better, probably. At least there wouldn’t be any chance of running into _him._

“Do you want to go to hospital?”

Yes.

No.

Yes.

“Merlin.”

“No,” he says, suddenly. “No, I don’t want to go to hospital.”

Silence. Then, a long, drawn-out sigh. A little softer: “Then _why_ , Merlin?”

The question makes Merlin angry. It revives the mortification and humiliation he felt during the shower, during the vomiting, during _that fucking night_ —instant, forceful, crippling. Right now, he cannot run away, or throw a tantrum and demolish half his room, or swallow some pills to make the thoughts go away, to sleep. He is strapped to the bed, too weak to move, can’t do a thing against the questions he doesn’t want to answer. His eyes burn with tears, and he clenches his jaw.

“Because nothing,” he spits out, lets his fingers dig into the mattress. “Nothing.”

“It wasn’t nothing.”

“It was.”

“You don’t swallow half a pack of quetiapine and for no reason, Merlin.”

“It wasn’t even a bloody cocktail!” Merlin bursts out, then, because dear God, does Gaius sound _assuming_. He doesn’t know—he hasn’t been around for the last three years, he doesn’t know anything. Not anymore. “There was no chance of me doing anything to myself, God!”

Apparently that’s enough for Gaius, because he straightens in the chair and stares down at Merlin, disbelievingly. He seems to snap—every last bit of softness leaves his wet eyes, and his mouth becomes a harsh, unforgiving line. His voice is furious. “And it wasn’t just _half_ a pack either, was it, Merlin? Where’s the rest of that pack, has it dissolved into thin air? And where did those benzos go, then, that you think I don’t know you’re taking? And no, if you mean nothing can happen to you besides hypotension and arrhythmia, both of which you had to a dangerous extent, then you’re right. And tachycardia. To an equally dangerous extent. You can be glad there was no liver failure, no coma—”

“I didn’t swallow it with alcohol, Gaius. Stop blowing it out of proportion.”

“Ah, you did your homework, then, yes?”

“I didn’t need to do any homework on this,” Merlin says, sardonically. They both know it’s true.

“Well then I’m sure you know that alcohol in your blood prior to consuming these kind of pills is equally as potent.”

At that, Merlin stills. “…How do you know?”

“Morgana called me,” Gaius says, and Merlin has to swallow down a surge of irrational anger. “She said that you might be having a funk again, but she didn’t say why. She only asked me to make sure you were okay.”

“You did,” Merlin says and doesn’t quite know if he’s being spiteful or grateful. There’s such a whirlwind of emotions inside him that he doesn’t want to think about right now, or, preferably, ever. “You did.”

“Just in time.” And here, Gaius’ voice falls quiet, becomes something small, vulnerable. “Just in time, Merlin.”

Merlin chances a glance to the side, for the first time since the discussion, and sees Gaius’ bowed head, the tightness in his posture, the way his hands are intertwined in a cramped grip in his lap, shaking every so slightly. Merlin’s heart lurches in his chest, painfully, and, yes, there’s guilt this time. Definitely guilt. Sitting in his throat, fat and unwanted, choking him up.

He draws in a shuddery breath. “Nothing would have happened. It wasn’t even intentional.” It’s all he can say at this moment in time—a futile attempt at reassuring Gaius, he supposes, though he’s not quite sure if there isn’t a bit of denial in there for himself as well. He doesn’t know if it’s true anymore or not. All he knows is he really, really just wanted to sleep. To sleep and forget, two things which would have been impossible for him to do that night without any additional assistance. When he thinks about it now, it still makes sense. And if he took one or two pills too much, well, then that was a moment of weakness, nothing more.

“I don’t care if it was intentional or not,” Gaius says. They both know it’s a lie but right now it’s easier to pretend it isn’t. Later. They will talk about this later. Now is not the time for it.

“Whatever,” Merlin mutters. While it would probably have hurt him under normal circumstances to hear Gaius say that, right now, frankly, he just doesn’t give a fuck. He averts his eyes, finds them drawn to the ceiling again and forces the thoughts down. It’s easy to do, like this, with his head still fuzzy and body still heavy. Easy to pretend he’ll fall asleep again in just another moment, and that nothing’s happened. That nothing will happen, that everything will stay the same.

 _It will_ , he reminds himself forcefully. _It will stay the same._

Gaius doesn’t really seem to think so. “As ‘whatever’ as it is to you, it isn’t to me,” he says, voice having reverted back to that harsher tone. “You will tell me what happened so I can assess the situation properly and make further arrangements as they are needed.”

“I don’t need any arrangements to be made,” Merlin says sullenly, scowling at the ceiling. “Everything is fine.”

“That ‘fine’ of yours, is it a river bifurcation of the Denial in Egypt?”

“No,” Merlin says. “I rather thought it’s one of the Dandy. Fine and dandy, you know. They go together. You ought to have heard of that.”

Gaius gives a long-suffering sigh. “I want to go home, Merlin. I’ve been sitting here for the past two days watching you. I’m tired.”

“No one’s stopping you.”

 _"You_ are. I won’t leave until you haven’t told me what’s wrong.”

“I haven’t asked you to watch over me, Gaius.”

“You haven’t because you couldn’t. But I did anyway. If I hadn’t, I would’ve been forced to call the ambulance. I _should_ have called the ambulance.”

“Well go ahead, then. Again: no one’s stopping you.”

“You know I can’t do that anymore.”

“Oh, right.” Here, Merlin turns his head a little, feels his mouth twist meanly. He isn’t proud of himself but really doesn't care as he adds, “Already in too deep, are you?”

“I am. I’ve already committed an ethical misconduct keeping you at home. If something had happened…”

“Nothing happened.”

" _If_ it had, Merlin. If it had. And to make sure it doesn’t happen again, you need to tell me what’s wrong.”

“Nothing’s wrong.”

“Merlin. Please.”

Merlin doesn’t look at him, concentrates on the ceiling instead. Something in his chest twinges, and he grimaces. It’s too early for this.

“Why, Merlin?”

“It’s nothing.”

“It’s not nothing.”

“It is.”

“It’s not.”

He sighs through his nose and closes his eyes. Feels the oncomings of a headache thrum in his temples. He’s tired. He doesn’t want to go there again. But damn him for forgetting that Gaius is like a dog with a bone when he wants to know something.

And apparently he still isn’t above emotional blackmail, because his leans forward and touches his hand to Merlin’s shoulder. His voice drops, becomes low. His hand and voice are soft, become soothing.

“I’m here, Merlin,” he murmurs, and Merlin’s head replays a hundred different echoes of this. A younger Merlin, a younger Gaius. Another room, another situation. But always Gaius at his bedside, his hand on Merlin’s shoulder or forehead, speaking low and soft, as if soothing a wild animal. It works, as it always has.

“I’m here, and you can tell me anything. You’re safe with me.”

Merlin knows he is. His heart beat speeds up, and the twisting in his chest becomes stronger, fiercer, painful. He opens his mouth.

“…It’s nothing.”

Gaius’ sigh is endlessly frustrated. His hand tightens on Merlin’s shoulder once. “Tell me.”

“I did,” Merlin murmurs, turning his head to the side, away from Gaius.

“You said it’s nothing.”

“It is.”

“It’s not nothing if it—damnit, Merlin, stop this. _Stop_ _this_. It’s not nothing if it sends you in a funk and makes you overdose on pills so you’re out for two days—”

Gaius’ words flood over Merlin, make him flush head to toe, anger sparking to life in his chest. God, doesn’t Gaius think he _doesn’t know_? How pathetic he is? How very much he hates what it’s done to him, what he’s _let_ it do to himself, how wrong it is, because—

“It’s _nothing_!” he snaps and forces himself to look Gaius back in the eyes, tears or not. He’s so worked up his breathing is coming fast, and his chest aches, aches, aches. He hates it. Hates himself. Hates _him_ —

“It’s nothing, because _Arthur_ is nothing! Nothing to me!”

The entire world around Merlin falls silent by simply speaking the name. Blood is rushing to his ears, storming, storming inside his veins. He’s staring, wild- and wet-eyed, at Gaius, can see comprehension begin to dawn slowly on his face. It makes him pull a grimace and turn his head away again to stare at the wall. His heart is hammering madly.

It’s out, now. Gaius knows. Merlin won’t be able to go back now, not after this. He never would be able to go back, ever again.

“The time has come, then?” Gaius murmurs after an eternity, says it as if it’s final and world-altering.

And it is. For Merlin, it is.

“Yeah,” Merlin says, hoarsely, swallowing hard. “Yeah.”


End file.
